Calling Card Thread (Poems by AWers)

vertigo78

Registered
Joined
Feb 15, 2013
Messages
11
Reaction score
0
Website
www.ElectricCereal.com
Television

He sat in the dark
Keeping warm over a fire of images
And no matter what colors
Flickered through the glow
His face stayed blue


Influential Ecstasy

I’ve built my life around chasing moments of influential ecstasy
The euphoria that springs from the pages of great books
The ache that follows a song whose lyrics you don’t even understand
Those epiphanies brought on by clouds of marijuana smoke


In the midst of these throes of the abstract

Either

Everything falls into place

Or I resign myself to the chaos that reigns wild
 

William E. Harlan

Fierce Pretender
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 3, 2013
Messages
340
Reaction score
32
Location
Cruising the web in my introvertible.
Website
www.WilliamEHarlan.com
Words.

There is something in our words, when heard, that releases, increases meaning between us and opens our eyes upon the rhyme.

Words will say blood, lust, honor and love with truth thrust up fast past the last one for weight while measured close for beauty and time.

They are blind signs to bind minds with nothing but the least and most important thing, breath.

Bright lights of life to drive another's thoughts with their lines and touch them inside with what we've said.

Our words are our reflections in sound and reveal more than we intend. And though we may abuse and bend them we are bound to them and let ourselves be found.
 

Lancastrian

Sockpuppet
Banned
Joined
Oct 19, 2013
Messages
90
Reaction score
8
Age
37
Location
...if only Mars was habitable
Website
rose-lancaster.livejournal.com
Hm... this is titled "Marionette"

I loathe time
Try to fall asleep
Count back from 1000
And end up at 2015
Never claimed to be good at math
Never asked to be a doormat

I'm tired of lying
And tired of hiding
The void inside of me
It shows no sign of dying
And this one ain't on me
No, this one's not from my lead
You each took what you needed
Till my heart barely beat
A thin, struggling melody

Lift your head, baby, you might just hear

Yet I'm still firmly standing
Isn't that's what's so shocking?
And you, you're still a-pulling
All of those thin little strings
But guess what, dearie?
This little marionette girl
Always saw those thin little strings
And one by one, she kept snipping
Snip snip snipping till she was free

Lift yourself up, girl, the world is within reach

But if the war is over
If this war was won
What's left of the survivor
But the personas she's worn
And is that why she looks so very lost
And is that why she seems so very torn
She just keeps saving everyone else
It's her nature now, all she has left
But this here now is the final test
Of if she can allow for help
Of if she will save herself

Oh, everyone, hold your breath
 
Last edited:

JustSarah

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 6, 2012
Messages
1,980
Reaction score
35
Website
about.me
This is my older style:

When the fae, fly away,
To the land of, nevermore,
Reaper’s words, have no sway,
Words one can’t, ignore,
In the land of, nevermore.

When the fields, turn to grey,
One listens to, a wolves bay,
As it howls to, nevermore,
Singing words, one can’t ignore,
In the land of, nevermore.

One longs
for the Sun’s
shining ...

light, it
glows only
in wake.

Heed these words, do take,
No more land of, nevermore.

---------------------
Nevermore is a recurring setting in my work. Shepherdess Song is technically more current. But it's so experimental, I wasn't sure if it was worth showing.
 
Last edited:

Escaliba

Registered
Joined
Aug 21, 2015
Messages
5
Reaction score
1
Location
Australia
Website
www.swwofwa.com
People of Australia


People of Australia, please stop, and try to understand
From fathers strong and brave we came, they pioneered this land,
Hang your heads in shame and weep at what we are today
Let us take a look at how life was before we became this way.

Our children once played outside with toys, had lots and lots of fun

No wires hanging from their ears, nor those of Dad or Mum,
A cardboard box, a piece of wood, a house built up in a tree
Their imagination made these things a pirate ship at sea.


Our mothers washed our clothes by hand, worked hard for me and you
Now we need a ‘Smart Machine’ that tells us just what to do,
And our steam irons have an IP address, now that’s a real must
Did we truly once use our hands, to sweep and clean and dust?

Once T.V sets (if owned at all), beamed proudly black and white

No choice of fifty channels, on which to waste our sight,
There was a time when mobile meant to walk and run around
Now all we hear everywhere, is the latest Ring tone sound.


Clothes were made to last and last, and then passed down the line
The quality was very good, and the workmanship was fine,
Lovely garments strongly made, we wore those clothes with pride
No three months of cheap imports, which soon get thrust aside.


There was a time when payday meant, our cash was paid out by hand
We loved to hold those notes and coins, now that was something grand,
And do you recall when women were so proud they worked at home?
Their incomes were not needed to pay out the mortgage loan.


Much is wrong in this land of ours, when you hear your neighbours say:
‘Your Christmas Tree offends me: just remove it right away!’
And the politicians they do forget those who placed them there
Too busy with their limousines and beauty parlour hair.


Now there’s Political Correctness, goodness, what a shocking term
But it has a very real tragedy; our children will not learn,
When books are changed in fear of any term that might offend
They no longer print the words that the original author penned.


If we give the vote to ID cards it will be the first step down the track
To our freedom gone and we won’t know until we want it back,
What fools of us the world wide that Millennium Bug did make
Panic all around the globe, we thought our lives at stake.


It has become a land of want, of rush and stress and greed
We have moved so far away from what we really need,
What would happen to us all, with one EMP burst from space?
Back to the stone-age life we’d go, and perhaps a state of grace?


So people of Australia, please stop and look back down the years
Our fathers pioneered this land for us, toiled with blood, sweat and tears,
Hang your heads in shame and weep at what we are today
Because people of Australia, we have surely lost our way.











 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Gramps

danaberrywrites

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Aug 16, 2015
Messages
114
Reaction score
15
Location
Tennessee
I posted this one in another thread, but I think it represents me.


Toddler

in the cradle
of sturdy tired arms
your head

no longer baby, not yet child

legs draped over my thighs
touching ground

I sigh
kiss your hair

I cradle closer
though rocking is past
I miss you
even while you are still mine
 

Leeland

Registered
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
31
Reaction score
2
Location
Alabama
(Hope it's not too late too add on to this thread. This is a new piece for me. It's a little out of my typical style, but more suited to reading than my typical spoken word pieces.)

I am comprised of nursery rhymes
School photos with bobbed off hair
A thousand and one Christmas dresses in plaid and velour
Worn squirming with my polished patent soul.

My mother's voice drags me into the past
With half remembered quaitrains
From midnight storybooks and tattered tales.

If I have ever existed it is
Here
Comfortably caged by childhood memories
Bedtime stories and
School Picture Day and
Christmases more ancient than my eyes.

Every day I fade in the mirror
Collapse into pieces of poetry like entropy.
The rhyme is all that remains when the reason disappears.

Poems are ghost stories
And if ghosts exist in these pentameter parameters
I am the spirit I would most like to meet.
 

CassandraW

Banned
Flounced
Kind Benefactor
Joined
Feb 18, 2012
Messages
24,012
Reaction score
6,476
Location
.
Now that this thread has been bumped, I might as well contribute. This one of mine probably comes closest to the spirit of the OP, as I understand it.


Unfelled

I bristled
when he came too near,
.....severed roses
...........in his hand,
fearing

he would
cut me down,
haul me to his parlor
.....pruned to fit,
.....shedding needles
...........bit by bit,
.....burdened with baubles
...........hung by children,
.....bowed beneath
...........his ceiling,
.....bound between
...........his walls.

That was not my plan.

I dug my toes into the soil,
sprawling wide
.....and reaching high.

I grew tall
.....and proud.

Years coiled round
.....and marked me,
.....thickening my skin.
One by one,
.....they passed me by.

I stand surrounded by sky
.....and barren ground

and I wonder,
sometimes,
when I fall
if I will make

.....a sound.
 

cjtait

Registered
Joined
Mar 3, 2016
Messages
17
Reaction score
2
Location
BC, Canada
This was written in room 587 of the Sandman Hotel in Kelowna, a few nights before Christmas; these were the last great memories and fun times with the woman who near-destroyed me. That I am able to look at them now is a marvel. I give no promise as to their worthiness amongst all your works here...but the image should be apparent. Hopefully.

Hidden Pieces

There are pieces of the night,
between the sheets a resonance.
A star hidden in the darkness of
our spent silence.
And in the heavy room
where light is trying double-hard
to gain our companionship,
to play awhile longer at some sort
of game that involves a deck of
cards and alcohol,
we'll let it follow far behind,
let it wait until we throw our cries
from five floors to a waiting lot
below.
We are all children in our hunger,
in our expectation.
We are all nervous of what
is unwell,
and lies hidden weakly behind
the kindness
and the sweet word.
 

kborsden

Has a few recurring issues
Kind Benefactor
Poetry Book Collaborator
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 4, 2006
Messages
5,973
Reaction score
1,312
Location
Where opinions have a distinct aroma.
Just realised I never posted in this thread. So here we go:

a grove, a wall, and an aeroplane

Raindrops sprinkled down from the pine tops,
painting the dirt track ahead, while the moon
guided us back to the old country road...
each forward step, an October undone—
our friended lips met—teen lovers again.

We stopped to sit on a crumbling wall
and played at spotting a shooting star,
but settled instead for an aeroplane
to grant that teen lovers could remain.

The grove behind, secreted away,
is where, as kids, we warmed our hearts with cider
and dared to dream of a world beyond
the trees—a world where you would hold my hand,
whisper our future: teen lovers always.

any other place

If I had known of any other place
(a woodland grove, or perhaps speckled cliffs)
to serve as a backdrop, and if I’d shared
that place, would you have stood in front of it?

If I had known the path that led toward,
or to a stretch nearby, could we now say,
‘forget such foolish ifs’, and live instead,
passing by the moss and rock of day-by-day?

Yet, just as the tides eat away the shore,
a remnant thought corrodes the path we took
while clambering vines struggle forth to adorn
the what-if place we never stood before—

and if you could believe in such a place
as where we are, would you still walk with me?

for Demi

To know that slumber could never take you
(that hushed words meant a single caress,
or one last second with you to my breast)
nor angels, smiling, could fold their wings,
I would submit to silence: psalm, spoken
between moments chained to culled breath—
augmented melody in recall, and yet
never allow my weary lids to shy.

There is no truth to find in peaceful rest,
no peace in pressing the day from my head,
but in darkness, I wait to hear—and long
for your disruption: nothingness in song.

For in the tune of your timid somethings,
I could surrender to a lullaby.

I often pretend to see her dancing

I often pretend to see her dancing
at twilight, between stars where light refuses
to lift — she twirls against the ether
while the cool evening patina resolves
to degage in blotted words on a page.
I misprint moments pooled in spilt ink,
and allow for ripples to plie —
the ephemeral ballet then seeps soft
behind the nocturnal eye as movements
that never were and never will be
again; tenderly, the veiled tendu
turns the final step, and the phrase is clear.

I often pretend to see her dancing
at twilight, pas de deux with sunken verse.

a dream of Mumbles

With our heels pointed toward the distance,
we watched the moon shatter across the pier
and promised we'd find each fallen fragment
no matter where the night would seek us.

Through December's familiar retention,
each turn saw shards lost beneath faded touch
and silence now steals us from the teenage cwtch
when the sky was ours for the keeping.

Yet, always recalled to the promenade
where age has altered memory's store-front —
we will never cash in our cosmic pieces
nor sandy heels for their distance covered.

We linger, embraced beyond sound's reach
in a dream of Mumbles on the horizon.

------------------------------

That should do.
 
Last edited:

Lathaden

Registered
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
I write a lot of non-fiction poetry and historical poetry. I'm waiting on possible publication for this one. I have a Harriet Tubman poem I need advice on, which was my motivation for coming here :)

[INSERT Self Portrait Along the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States, 1932 by Frida Kahlo]

This is an early self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, three years after her marriage to famous Mexican painter Diego Rivera. Rivera achieved renown in Mexico and the United States, which brought the couple to the states so Rivera could create large commissioned murals in New York City and Detroit. Kahlo was relatively unknown as an artist in her lifetime. Rivera and the press referred to her as Carmen Rivera. She preferred Frieda, but the name evoked thoughts of Nazi Germany. She later removed the ‘e,’ calling herself ‘Frida’ so as to sound less German.


Frieda Kahlo, Standing Along the Borderline of Mexico and the United States
BY LINDSEY THADEN

Covered in blood and cheese, purple,
I came into hot lights, black curly hair, brown arms,
screaming, writhing, fighting—
Two hemostats clamped and then between,
a doctor cut a pearly, blue cord.

My given name, Carmen,
Now born a Rivera,
I still scream, mierda, fight—
I cannot find myself.

I chose Frieda,
which extends from silver nostrils
like large, flat paint bristles
and burns like noxious gas,
crossing, sharp edges—
abrupt halt.

1925, there was a crash.
¡Ay! ¡Dios!
Shattered glass suspended midair,
One moment—
a grand chandelier sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight,
before turning to sand whipping over jagged, hard peaks—
arms and legs made right angles amidst screaming.
Then I felt it—
a hot, sharp metal piercing into my soul.

A fertility god lay broken at my feet,
dead as my womb, dead as calaveras
dancing before tamales, mole negro, pan de muerto.

I look to the Aztec sun,
rojo, blanco, verde.
The cacti flower and their roots
reach deeper into the earth
for water,
for life.

Plumes of black clouds
block the scorching heat as
steel and glass rise from the earth
like sequoias.

I cannot see myself.
I blow like a seed among rocks, thirsty,
I cannot see the sun.
 

NordicWrath

He Who Prefers the Anachronistic
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 18, 2016
Messages
119
Reaction score
3
Location
In a Van Down by the River
Britons Afire


Poison, a means to this so bitter end.
Stand defiant around death. No pikeman
Will your flesh and at last your spirit rend.

The first rape ichorous upon your tongue:
Virgin women, your nation, your daughters.
Too many and more final dirges sung.

War-painted faces, same daughters reclaim-
Ambush, metal and wood crack. Success.
Travel further. A rape for a rape. Flame.

Camulodunum burns. Reinforcements.
Escape, to the plain. More to take, to free.
More soldiers seen, call upon the ancients.

Phalanx finds Celt fury. Willing to die.
death for briton death for life death for rage
Slaughter- Retreats- Viscera- Fear cry.

O, Warrior Queen, drink the loss of Celt.
Poisonous hatred crashes through the veins
In your slowing heart: every crime felt.

Fall, Boadicea. Your fight is done, lost.
Roman and Celt in arms. Honor the cost.​
 

Kaaba

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 18, 2022
Messages
111
Reaction score
58
Age
38
Location
Henrico, Va
Website
kbupdikejr.wixsite.com
"to betsy!"

now if you knew goose whut flew in thru me window i'd bet the farm on yer sympathetic mob road.
Ar! the whore done tore one thruuu me dressus missus!
To Betsy!
Waiiiiit a minute.

Ajajajajaja
Twao Twao Twao orghii gammi orighi gamim twao

aoaoaoaoaoaoao

(smack!)
 

AliceWonders

Registered
Joined
Jun 7, 2022
Messages
7
Reaction score
6
I'm new here. Trying to get the hang of things. I'm enjoying all of your poetry. It will take me days to get through the read to see them all. Here's my offering:


Violation


It’s like someone taking
your bicycle. A stranger
riding it away, bending the spokes,
kicking out the reflectors.

When you find it, weeks later,
down in a ditch by the road,
it’s not the same bike.
It’s not your bike.
It’s nobody’s bike.
Need has nothing to do with it.

At night a man stands in your room,
puts a thumb to your silence
as though you were fruit, purple, vulnerable.
You hear him rummaging through drawers, closets,
the fine, white light of the refrigerator
finds its way under your door.
The next day the house is empty and dusty.
It’s not your house.
It’s nobody’s house.

You sell the house, your belongings.
You buy a car and move away.
The new things are never the same.
It’s something you learn to live with.
It’s something that works out
like a boxer in the back of your mind
giving you bruises, making you tired.